Field Based Training

As I mentioned before, I’m headed to Field Based Training this week, at a Volunteer site near Lake Atitlán, a huge tourist attraction in Guatemala. It’s basically a normal lake, but (and excuse the bad grammar) way awesome-r. It’s surrounded by volcanoes (of which there seems to be abundance in Guatemala). I’ll be sure to include pictures once I get back.

Atitlán is in the province of Sololá, which is largely composed of indigenous populations. The tourist city on the lake is Panajachel, where I plan to be making a stop. The lake is also known to have several hippie communities in San Pedro, an area which is, not surprisingly, off limits to us.

Aside from the excitement of the impending Field Based Training, my group of 8 marketing volunteers was told the 8 sites we’ll be receiving October 9th – remember this date, because it’ll either be a day of celebration or a day I’ll need to be talked down from the ledge (as my dad puts it) depending on my assignment. These 8 sites are as follows, 3 in the department of Chimaltenango (only an hour and a half from the office/relative civilization), and one in each of the following departments: Huehuetenango(8 hours), El Quiche (made famous by Rigoberta Menchu, 6-7 hours), Quetzaltenango(10 hours), San Marcos(10 hours) and Alta Verapaz (5-6 hours). Though these names may not mean much to you now, they all scream one thing to me: lack of Spanish speakers. So, at this point in my training I’m a little nervous about my sight assignment. It mainly depends on the nature of the site, not necessarily its geographical location. If I’m assigned to a village site, it’ll be very different from a city or a suburb. But, looking on the bright side, there aren’t many things that will further differentiate my resume from others than fluency in a Mayan dialect. Although, oddly enough, this provides me very little consolation.

Lastly, my individual marketing project has officially taken flight. I’ve been working with my host mom to start a jam-making business and we made our first batches of Pineapple Carrot and Strawberry Jam to sell this weekend. As I have very little jam making experience, (Wait, who am I kidding? None whatsoever) I felt like the blind leading the blind. I figured anything with lots of sugar was sure to sell, so I erred on the side of very, very sweet. Luckily, it came out very well and sold quickly. But, I suspect competition. I have reason to believe that one of my site mate’s sisters has taken a liking to our idea and is planning to make her own jam and undercut our price. I’ll report back after an undercover investigation. Sabotage might be in order. Just kidding.

Or am I?
Until next time..